"Hullo? I'm not your-oh. That kind of mate."
"Yeah. That kind of mate."
"Play again?"
Cedric laughed and shook his head. "We'd better be getting back into school."
"We should..." Wood got out his broom and flew a lap around the stadium, then soared through the middle goalpost. "But I'm not going to." A drop of water that had clung to the post fell on the back of his neck, leading him to a realization. "The rain's letting up."
Cedric didn't respond. He stared out over the pitch, as if looking for a rainbow. But nothing was in the sky but a gray, looming, mass. Abruptly he reached into the pocket of his robe. The paper he found was creased, but still legible. "Oliver? Hark at this."
"Everyone calls me Wood." The keeper narrowed his eyes, but flew over.
"D'you recognize these names?" Cedric had laboriously copied 10 names, 9 of them Hogwarts alumni, from a record book in the trophy room.
"They're all Keepers."
Cedric rolled his eyes mildly. "Trust you to catch the Quidditch reference. What about their houses?"
"What about them?"
"You know this, Wood."
He studied the paper. "Gryffindor…Gryffindor…Slytherin…Gryffindor…I'm sensing a bit pattern here."
"And these Keepers are all not only eight out of ten in Gryffindor, but they're all…" Cedric pressed him.
"I don't know."
"Think about the order they're in. You should recognize that, at least."
"I'm seventh?"
"So you are."
"Hang on…I think…no, I don't know. Who are they?"
"Hogwarts' all-time best Keepers, in terms of save percentage. This top one's a fluke, but the rest aren't."
"Why are you showing this to me?"
"It's the Gryffindors up here. The ones that'll stop the goal, no matter how much it hurts." Both of them remembered the incident in Wood's fourth year when he had been mauled by both Quaffle and Bludger simultaneously, "but took one for the team".
"So what?"
"I dunno. I guess I just…admire you guys."
Cedric's face was momentarily illumined by a lightning bolt. Thunder crashed, and the rain began to fall again.